Weekly News Update: Horrible People make for Hilarious News!

It may be sad, but people being dicks to each other can certainly create some damn entertaining news. Of course, our news of the week isn’t completely full of horrible things, that’d just be depressing! This week well touch on Portal, League of Legends, Humble Bundles and Lego. To get things stated, I’ve got a question for you: Did you know, in video games, particularly very competitive ones, people are often very mean to each other?

Honestly, if you’ve played more than 30 minutes of League of Legends online, or spent any time on the internet, you know people get angry. And when you make a tiny mistake, are loosing do to no fault of your own, or dare to be even a little apathetic, then they get really angry! Well, during a recent interview Travis George, a developer at Riot Games, expressed his need to really know why.

“We’ve experienced it all ourselves,” said Geroge. “But then, we actually sat down and said, ‘How do we actually more tangibly understand how bad the impact is, or what the impact is, or understand the problem more?’ And that’s where you’ve got guys who are PhD researchers who can help develop those models, and we have, actually, those models for how we track and trend what we call ‘player behavior.’”

Frankly, in my completely unqualified opinion, this is simply people being people. Don’t expect it to change, since its been going on from the time the first Neolithic man spawn-camped his tribal competition. It just seems a little unnessicary when you can clearly control your players. In other news:

Well, okay, maybe he was more than just mean. It was recently announced that Christian “IWillDominate” Rivera has been banned form playing LoL for one year following and investigation by the Riot Vice President of eSports, Dustin “RedBeard” Beck. (The names! So good!!)

Rivera’s track record is not, by any measure good, and he has been “brought before the Tribunal “eight or nine times and holds a persistent record of in-game harassment, verbal abuse, offensive language and negative attitude.” Beck had this to say:

“We take sportsmanship and player behaviour very seriously, and we fundamentally believe that pro players should not be exempt from scrutiny over their behaviour”

Meh. I’d consider namecalling a meta-strategy in professional play. Of course, I did like BASEketball…

Hitman: Absolution has been received very well by gamers and critics alike. It’s advertising campaigns however, have suffered far more than the game itself. The game received a large amount of flak for its “Sexy Killer Nuns” trailer, and now, is recieiving additional eyebrow-raises with its new Facebook app. Marshall Honor of of the Escapist puts describes this horrible, horrible idea:

The app itself is fairly simple: Select a target from your list of Facebook friends, choose an identifying feature that he or she possesses, then specify a reason why he or she deserves to shuffle off this mortal coil. The appearance descriptions and justifications range from the simple (“her shortness;” “she’s on Facebook far too much”) to the bizarre (“his silly moustache;” “he supports a crap football team”) to the borderline offensive (“her small tits;” “she works at a job she hates”).

The app was removed pretty quickly, followed by this statement from SquareEnix:

Earlier today we launched an app based around Hitman: Absolution that allowed you to place virtual hits on your Facebook friends. Those hits would only be viewable by the recipient and could only be sent to people who were confirmed friends.

We were wide of the mark with the app and following feedback from the community we decided the best thing to do was remove it completely and quickly. This we’ve now done. We’re sorry for any offence caused by this.

Moving on from the mean and misplaced to the just plain stupid, a recent study revealed horrible horrible news…

The name “Apple,” while still relatively rare, rose 15 percent for girls, climbing up 585 spots in the space of a year. For boys, “Mac” climbed by 12 percent. “Siri” has seen a 5% increase in popularity as a girl’s name.

I…I…I need to say something. People of the world, we need to chat. Apple, is not an acceptable name (Sorry to any children named Apple; not your fault.) Siri, as a name, is simply an abomination. Now, in 50 years, these names may be more acceptable, due to cultural reasons, but in the current era; NO! Just NO! Don’t do it!!! I BEG YOU!

Now, some people have expressed concerns that the Humble Bundle are betraying their roots. The Humble Bundle does have a history of supporting Indie Games, and THQ is certainly not an Indie Developer. However, lets take a step back for a second.

Saint’s Row: The Third..for no more than$5 dollars. Don’t yell at a good thing.

Also, Humble Bundle Higher-Ups have said that this is simply the next step of the expansion of the HUmble Bundle’s repertoire.

Finally this week, I just wanted to share an amazing bit of the Internet. Portal is an amazing game. Lego’s are amazing. Why NOT combine them?!?

The video’s a great bit of creative creation, and also shows of a bit of creativity. There are tons of Machinima out there, and I’ve only seen a few Lego ones. Go out there an create people! I want a recreation of God of War in K’nex, and Assassins Creed in Playmobile! DO IT FOR THE INTERNET!

Push it. Real Good:

About the Author

Born in Maine, educated in Canada, and forged on the internet, Jacob is a proud gamer, unabashed nerd, and writer. He received his degree in classics from Mount Allison University and his love of stories and their meaning from countless hours spent reading Homer, playing old school RPG’s and studying Joseph Cambell. His one rule to live by? “Always dress as if you were going to give a speech.